The Archdiocese of New Orleans has urged Catholics to avoid the new Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine, asserting it is “morally compromised” by the use of an abortion-derived cell line in its development and production.
In its “Statement Regarding the Janssen/Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 Vaccine,” the archdiocese encourages Catholics to receive either the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine, if available, since they “do not rely on cell lines from abortions in the manufacturing process and therefore can be morally acceptable for Catholics as the connection to abortion is extremely remote.”
The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being and is therefore a grave evil. While there is often nothing morally wrong with using a human cadaver for worthy scientific pursuits, such a use becomes evil when it is complicit in or encourages the killing of the person.
For example, it is one thing for doctors to use the organs of a donor who died of natural causes, it is quite another thing for doctors to kill a patient in order to harvest his organs.
In its statement, the New Orleans archdiocese does not forbid Catholics from receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine since the action is not morally wrong in itself and does not necessarily imply approval of a past evil, but it does strongly suggest the use of alternative vaccines when available.
Many Catholics may in fact receive the Johnson & Johnson vaccine without approving of the process by which it came about, but their pro-life witness would be more powerful were they to opt for a vaccine with less direct ties to past abortions.
In the first place, the Church wishes to highlight “the wrongdoing of those who decided to use cell lines from abortions to make vaccines,” the statement says, since they freely chose to perform this evil action. By their own actions, however, Catholics will wish to show their clear disapproval of these choices by avoiding the vaccine when other alternatives are available.
Above all, the New Orleans archdiocese seems to wish to underscore the evil of abortion and the important witness of Catholics in making known their absolute condemnation of the killing of unborn babies.
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